Isabella Rosetta (Rogers) Hohnhorst

Isabella Rosetta (Rogers) Hohnhorst, age 85, a more recent resident of the Copeland Oaks Senior Community in Sebring, Ohio passed away on Friday, August 9, 2019 at her home on Preston Lane, at Copeland Oaks, Sebring, Ohio after a serious, short illness.

She was born October 31, 1933 in Dunbar, East Lothian, Scotland to Herbert W. and Janet T. (McKenzie) Rogers. Her father was an English Cavalry Soldier stationed at Dunbar and her mother was the daughter of a local North Sea fisherman. Isabella was one of three children, all of whom were separated by the unfortunate death of their mother in childbirth during the Great Depression when Isabella was just eighteen months old. Isabella was brought up by her father and her paternal grandmother in the village of Garsington on the Hill, an ancient and historic village some eight miles east of Oxford, England. She attended school at Garsington and started work at fourteen at the local post office. Her older brother, Earnest Rodgers was raised by his maternal grandmother in Dunbar, Scotland while her younger brother was adopted, renamed and raised in Norfolk, England. Her younger brother became Kenneth Mayers of Suffolk, England at or near the town of Ipswich.

Isabella worked at the Royal Post Office until on October 8, 1955 she found the love of her life, a young American Airman who was stationed at the Upper Heyford Royal Airforce Station north of Oxford, England. She was lovely, vivacious and outgoing young lady and after six months her intended had convinced her to marry him. They were married at St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church in Cowley, Oxford on April 14, 1956. In accordance with her grandmother’s teachings she took “good care of her husband” since she was nineteen.

The couple took a month’s honeymoon and made a round robin trip fully around the Isle from Land’s End up through Wales and on north to John O’Groats in the far north of her country of birth in Scotland, retuning along the East Coast and the North Sea to live in the small village of Tackley, Oxon where they began their life for the next several years. In 1958, when Terrence became a Sergeant, they moved onto the Air Base and lived in NCO on-base housing for another two years before coming in late 1959 to America to love on her husband’s family farm in Deerfield, Ohio that they had purchased previously from his father and mother who moved to Florida.

Together they farmed the 160 acre farm in Deerfield while Terrence, her husband, worked off the farm in Engineering and Land Surveying for various governmental agencies until he established his own consulting engineering firm in 1970. In 1970, they build a new home on an eighteen acre section of the farm, after cutting the farm into sellable parcels sold the farmhouse to an old employee of his firm. That couple had four children of minor ages.

Isabella and her husband had no children but were very active in the lives of the neighboring family’s children, taking them individually to Canada and to various activities, such as, the Ice Capades and the Pro Football Hall of Fame, as well as, travels to museums and other educational and entertainment venues.

In addition to her parents, her paternal grandmother and aunt who raised her, Isabella was preceded in death by her two brothers, Earnest Rogers and Kenneth Mayers (Rogers); her brothers-in-law, Laurence and Martin Hohnhorst; and her mother and father-in-law, Sarah E. and Herman Dudley Hohnhorst.

She is survived by her loving husband of 63 plus years, a semi-retired consulting civil engineer; she also leaves two sisters-in-law; a number of nieces and nephews, as well a number of great nieces and nephews of the Rogers and Mayers families on her side, and Audrey Young, her best friend of her youth, all living in London. On her husband’s side there are her husband’s remaining younger sister, Ellen Patricia (Hohnhorst) Cusumano of Florida and many nieces and nephews all living in America.

Isabella loved animals; she and her husband acquired two poodles in Great Britain while living on the Air Base and brought them to America with them. Her favorite was the male named Duke of the Isles, registered with the British Kennel Club and who became her constant companion. Duke was her great helper on the farm when rounding up chickens or seeing-off groundhogs in the orchard.

Isabella was a natural artist and craftsman, learning complex knitting patterns when she was about four years of age. She became proficient as a tailor, as well as, with general arts and crafts, moving on to ceramic and porcelain dolls from pouring molds to cleaning and firing the pieces to painting and re-firing to designing and making the final clothes for the figures. Isabella had a natural knack of understanding the details; she could immediately discern a small error in knitting or crocheting and was the fastest of all in her knitting, able to talk with club members as she knit almost like a machine. She often found errors in the written knitting or crocheting patterns and immediately saw the correct procedure that was intended. In her spare time, she studied stained glass work and made various pieces, including a spectacular example for their bathroom window.

Isabella was a member of women’s local hobby club who met monthly at alternating homes. Here she was often asked to “figure something out” in the progress of a member’s project. She did this service many times and became the “person to go to” among her friends. She also joined the local Red Hat Society that met for lunch monthly. Isabella enjoyed socializing with her friends here in America.

In the year 2015, Isabella determined that at age 82, she would not have to mow grass any longer so the couple moved the Copeland Oaks in Sebring, Ohio for a less strenuous life. She loved her new home, called a “villa’ and continued with her general hobbies and their travels until her demise.

Isabella will be placed in the couple’s one grave site in Deerfield Cemetery in the village where they had lived together for 56 years. Her husband Terrence is to be placed in the same single plot when he goes so that they will be together again. Terrence had kept Isabella “on a pedestal” ever since he and she became as one. Terrence had promised Isabella that she could go first so she would not be alone in this far away land not her own and that he would plod on down the road as far as he could go and her would look for her and rejoin her on the other side if she will just wait inside the gates as she promised.

Arrangements are by Cassaday-Turkle-Christian Funeral Home, 75 S. Union Ave. Alliance, Ohio 44601.